Page 3580 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 27 October 2015
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Further to this, the cost of the scheme is quite unclear because of those concerns that I just outlined regarding many of the blocks not being appropriate for dual occupancy and many of the blocks achieving a higher price for a stand-alone single dwelling. The cost of the scheme or the income expected to be derived as a result of this variation is unknown. We repeatedly asked: what is the financial return of this draft variation? How much extra money is the government going to get as a result of this draft variation? There was no figure.
I fully expect at some point that someone opposite is going to try to say that the opposition has cost the territory $X million as a result of not supporting this draft variation. If that is so, then somebody has been dishonest to the committee because in the committee hearings we heard that there is no known figure for the cost or the income of not going ahead with this draft variation. That is backed up by numerous professionals who said, in effect, that stand-alone single dwellings are likely to return a higher income level for the government.
Further to this, Madam Speaker, I am concerned about the potential for negative equity as a result of this scheme. In effect, the government is spot rezoning several hundred properties. If they are spot rezoning several hundred properties into dual occupancy, presumably if they are bought as dual occupancy blocks and used for dual occupancy it is because a higher value has been attributed to those blocks.
However, if this government at some point in the coming few years decides to broaden the dual occupancy policy to other blocks, then the premium that people paid for those blocks under the Mr Fluffy rezoning will have been lost. Therefore, we run the very real risk that negative equity could come about if this government broadens the dual occupancy policy to other blocks in Canberra. In effect, the premium that people would be paying for a dual occupancy block as a result of draft variation 343 would be eroded if the government were to release more dual occupancy blocks into the market.
We also heard that it is just wrong to have stand-alone or separate schemes within zones such as this. RZ1 is no longer just RZ1. It is RZ1 and RZ1+. Some blocks are RZ1. Other blocks are RZ1+ because they have got the additional right for dual occupancy. That seems to me like a new zone. That is not RZ1. That is a new zone. The difference is that there is no transparency because RZ1 is still there on the map. It would be clearer for everyone if they did actually call it a new zone. That way for all time people would be able to look at what blocks in Canberra have what privileges with regard to development.
Instead, we are going to have this cryptic system whereby there are going to be several hundred blocks in Canberra that are going to have additional rights and additional privileges but no-one is really going to know which ones they are because they are all zoned as RZ1.
Madam Speaker, this government in 2001, 2002 and 2003 blew up the dual occupancy market in Canberra. They campaigned against it fiercely when they were in opposition. I am not saying that the dual occupancy market or the dual occupancy provisions
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